Friday, April 7, 2017

Wake Up, Drumpf

MELBOURNE – The catastrophic outcome
of last November’s U.S. presidential election is now clear. President Donald
Trump’s indifference to the risk of climate change, and the actions he is
taking because of that indifference, are likely to have consequences that dwarf
the significance of his executive order on immigration, his nomination of an
arch-conservative to the Supreme Court and, should he manage to achieve it, his
repeal of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).

With the exception of launching a
nuclear war, it is hard to think of anything a U.S. president could do that is
liable to harm more people than last month’s order canceling rules issued under
former President Barack Obama to freeze the construction of new coal-fired
power plants and shut down many old ones. Trump’s order followed his pledge to
rescind stricter fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and his
announcement that he wants to slash spending on climate science.

Although Trump did not announce the
withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, his actions are likely
to prove incompatible with the U.S. government’s pledge to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The Paris Agreement,
signed by 195 countries, is our last real chance of keeping global warming to
less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Even 2 degrees is too
much for the inhabitants of low-lying island states. Many of these states were
pleading for a 1.5-degree limit — without which some will disappear beneath the
ocean.

Any increase in global temperature
greater than 2 degrees, scientists agree, risks triggering feedback loops that
cause much greater warming and could render large parts of the planet
uninhabitable. For example, further warming would release large quantities of
methane — a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — from thawing
Siberian permafrost, leading to more warming, more thawing and more methane in
the atmosphere. Similarly, warming causes the loss of Arctic ice, which means
that less of the sun’s heat is reflected back rather than being absorbed by the
ocean.

During the election campaign, Trump
described climate change as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese to destroy
American industry. Last month, Scott Pruitt, Trump’s appointee to head the
Environmental Protection Agency, said that he did not believe that carbon
dioxide is the primary contributor to climate change. He added that “we do not
know that yet,” and “we need to continue the review and analysis.”

The American Meteorological Society
promptly wrote to Pruitt saying that it is “indisputable” that CO2 and other
greenhouse gases are the primary cause of global warming, and that it is “not
familiar with any scientific institution with relevant subject matter expertise
that has reached a different conclusion.”

That is true. What many commentators
failed to notice, however, is that even if, contrary to all the evidence, we
were to accept Pruitt’s statement that “we do not know” whether CO2 is the
primary contributor to climate change, the Trump administration’s actions would
still be reckless. Unless the probability that CO2 is the primary contributor
to climate change is vanishingly small, it is wrong to take chances with the
future of our planet and the lives of hundreds of millions of people in order
to reduce energy costs for Americans and preserve a few thousand jobs in the
coal industry. (In fact, coal jobs are disappearing because of automation and
competition from cheaper natural gas, not because of regulations to reduce CO2
emissions.)

Perhaps, though, Trump does not see
his policy as reckless because, as he has repeatedly proclaimed, he puts
“America first.” And it is indeed America between now and the next election
that he puts first, at the expense of Americans’ longer-term interests and the
interests of everyone who is not American. In the short term, those who will
suffer most from climate change are not Americans but people living in tropical
latitudes, and especially the poor, who will have nowhere to go when rains fail
or the heat parches their crops. When sea levels rise, those island-state
inhabitants, living just a meter or two above sea level, will be the first to
be driven off their land, followed by tens of millions of people farming small
plots in fertile delta regions in Bangladesh, Southeast Asia and Egypt.

The Paris Agreement has no mechanism
for sanctioning countries that fail to fulfill their pledges. The idea is that
such countries will be “named and shamed.” Well before Trump was elected
president, however, when the notorious video in which he boasted of groping
women became public, it was obvious that he is immune to shame. What, then, can
other countries, and individuals, whether in the U.S. or beyond its borders, do
about the fact that Trump is jeopardizing the future of us all, for many
generations to come?

If the U.S. uses the cheapest
available fuels to produce energy, irrespective of the harm that burning those
fuels does to others, it is giving its companies an unfair advantage over those
elsewhere that are making a good-faith effort to reduce their greenhouse-gas
emissions and meet their Paris pledges. That should be enough for the World
Trade Organization to allow other countries to erect trade barriers against
U.S. goods. If, however, the WTO is not brave enough to take that step, the
remedy is in the hands of foreign consumers, who should show the Trump
administration what they think of its policies by choosing not to buy American.

A boycott is a blunt instrument that
would, regrettably, harm many U.S. workers who did not vote for Trump and are
in no way responsible for his policies. But with so much at stake, and such
limited means of changing Trump’s policies, what else is there to do?

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About Me

This is a blog about what interests me. Here you will find stories on animals, including animal rights material, cute stuff, and random informative posts about weird, beautiful and interesting creatures. Horses, Spotted Hyenas, and Border Collies will make regular appearances.
Also prominently featured will be posts about the Arts. Animation, photography, and the traditional forms, plus "outsider art," film and books.
Other things that will surface here are Japan & the Japanese, John Oliver, surfing, skateboarding and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, interesting places and structures,and my own art, writing and photography.
There will be rants. It's an election year, and I am beginning to have a political dimension to my personality. I am also horrified at the level of injustice and violence visited upon people here in the US and elsewhere - particularly against people of color, immigrants, and the LGBT community. Some of these stories will be very hard to read, but I believe we must read them to keep ourselves mindful of the racist and vicious things that happen every day, to speak out when we see discrimination, and root out its evil from ourselves.